How to calibrate the laptop battery on 12.04

Question

Since a couple of days or so my laptop (asus n76vm) does a hard shut-down when the battery indicates 20% life left. It just cuts off the power, no shut-down screen or anything, making the hard drive do that nasty 'scratchy' sound.

What should I do now? It seems the battery is less powerfull than it was before (which makes sense) but the OS didn't keep track. How should I go about re-calibrating the battery?

Solution 1

Have you tried power-calibrate ?

sudo apt install power-calibrate

then run

power-calibrate -r

You can read the manual or run man power-calibrate for more information.

Solution 2

Update
As per the latest version of power-calibrate, use this command

power-calibrate  -R -r 20 -d 5 -s 21 -n 0 -p

Where

-d secs  specify a delay before starting
-h show  help
-n CPUs  specify the number of CPUs to exercise
-o file  output results into YAML formatted file
-p       show progress
-r secs  specify run duration in seconds of each test cycle
-R       use Intel RAPL per CPU package data to measure Watts
-s num   number of samples (tests) per CPU for CPU calibration

Comments

[Sufian]

I had to run the command with sudo, like sudo power-calibrate -p. "-r" argument needs seconds value as well. Maybe the command has changed. I'm on Debian Buster.

[Rajesh Chaudhary]

Should I run the command while charging or with the battery only?

[Alshoja]

Not sure but I think it won't be a deal, you can run that either in charging or unplugged in my case I was plugged

[Jocelyn delalande]

power-calibrate seems to display information only, not to configure the OS with it. Am I wrong on my reading of the man ?

[thedumbkid]

does this command only display information or does it actually calibrate?

[Mr. Wrong]

My System76 Galago Pro has no RAPL domains, so it had to discharge so that the power usage could be measured.